Prior to the creation of the General Register Office (GRO) in 1837, there was no national system of civil registration in England and Wales.

Baptisms, marriages and burials were recorded in parish registers maintained by Church of England (Anglican) clergy.

However, with the great increase in nonconformity and the gradual relaxation of the laws against Catholics and other dissenters from the late 17th century, more and more baptisms, marriages and burials were going unrecorded in the registers of the Anglican Church.

The increasingly poor state of English parish registration led to numerous attempts to shore up the system in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Additionally, except in the case of Jews and Quakers, legal marriages had to be carried out according to the rites of the Church of England.

Only those maintained by the clergy of the Church of England could be presented in court as legal documents, and this caused considerable hardship for Nonconformists.

[1] Eventually, increasing concern that the poor registration of baptisms, marriages and burials undermined property rights by making it difficult to establish lines of descent, coupled with the complaints of Nonconformists, led to the establishment in 1833 of a parliamentary select committee on parochial registration.

In addition, the government wanted to survey matters such as infant mortality, fertility and literacy to bring about improvements in health and social welfare.

It was hoped that improved registration of vital events would protect property rights through the more accurate recording of lines of descent.

[2] As a result, in 1836, legislation was passed that ordered the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales.

During the First World War the GRO was responsible for co-ordinating National Registration, which underpinned recruitment to the armed forces, the movement of workers into the munitions industries, and rationing.

[2] In 1970 the GRO became part of the newly created Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS), with the Registrar General in overall charge.

The move followed changes to make Office for National Statistics (ONS) more independent of the British Government, which included relinquishing the registration role.

The FRC was closed in 2008, in response to steadily decreasing visitor numbers caused by the increased online availability of the records.

[6] Births had to be registered within 42 days at the district or sub-district office, usually by the mother or father, or for a fee the registrar could visit the home.

In 1953 a child's father could also be recorded on the birth certificate, if not married to the mother, without being physically present to sign the register.

Marriages were only legally binding if they were notified to the superintendent registrar by the officiating minister so in effect, this required the presence of a local registration officer as the authorising person.

When a nonconformist minister or other religious official, such as a rabbi, performed the ceremony it was necessary for the local registrar or his assistant to be present so that the marriage was legal.

[8] This was inadequate to guarantee all deaths were registered, since in principle a body could be buried without a religious service, and those who had not been baptised (mostly young children) did not qualify for Christian burial.

Until 1983, the copies received by the Registrar General were bound into volumes, and three separate alphabetical indexes were prepared on a quarterly basis.

From their inception, the alphabetical indexes give the surname, the forenames if registered, the registration district and the volume and the page on which the entry may be found.

The GRO indexes are a major tool for persons tracing their family history, as well as those needing duplicate copies of their own birth or marriage certificates.

The GRO currently charge £12.50 for each certificate of birth, marriage or death, although a more expensive premium service is available for those who need copies of documents quickly.

Certificates contain the seal of the General Register Office and show an abridged version of the Royal Coat of Arms.

The process of scanning, digitising and indexing suffered severe delays, with only (roughly) half the records delivered by the end of the contract period.

[11] The IPS expected to reach a decision on the future of the digitisation project during financial year 2011/12,[12] but in August 2012 it was announced that "there are no current plans to resume this work".